Thank you, Mr. Preston.
It's to embarrass somebody. It's not to actually find out what happened; it's simply to sift through that sock drawer, to dig through somebody's old love letters, to go through the contents of their garbage can, and that sort of thing, to take that out of context and see what sticks--just throw mud at the wall and see what sticks.
That brings me to point number four, Mr. Chairman, the four reasons the Liberals don't want to discuss their expenses along with ours, and they don't want to look, as the amendment to their motion suggests, at 2004 as well as 2006, and that is that it would remove their opportunity to set up a de facto double jeopardy here. The concept of double jeopardy and the prohibition on double jeopardy in Canada--and in all civilized countries, I might add--is based on the idea that if an assertion is made that you've done something that is not lawful, not within the bounds of the law, those who are prosecuted are allowed one shot at it, and of course, as you know, there's a proceeding in court.
I should mention, of course, the proceeding in court is the Conservative Party trying to get its money back, and not the reverse.
The Liberals realize there's a very good chance that what's going to happen is that the courts are going to rule in our favour. Well, they don't want that to happen. They can't stop that from happening, thank goodness, or else we'd be debating a motion to stop the courts from looking at this because this committee is so much better suited, in the Liberals' minds, to be dealing with issues like this. But the courts are going to ultimately decide how the law ought to be interpreted, and that's what this really comes down to: how should the law be interpreted? Laws get written sometimes in ways that allow for a variety of legitimate interpretations. Ultimately the courts have to decide which of those interpretations is legitimate.
Look, we on this committee interpreted the Elections Act, the part dealing with identification, differently from how the Chief Electoral Officer did when it came to the issue of veiled voting. I personally think, with appropriate respect, that the Chief Electoral Officer's interpretation was incorrect and ours was correct, but I'm respectful of his interpretation; that is, I think it was given legitimately. All of us are anxious to pass legislation that will deal with the fact that the Chief Electoral Officer has come along and interpreted a law, actually the same law, with regard to the addresses of rural voters, or the absence of addresses that cite a civic address, a physical location, from drivers' licenses and other pieces of ID. Now, this is something where the law was passed without an awareness that this could arise as a problem, and not just from us but from the experts. Mr. Mayrand and his predecessor, Mr. Kingsley, appeared before us, and it hadn't occurred to them either.
Mr. Chairman, I'm using this by way of analogy to point out that there can be multiple interpretations of the same law and that it's legitimate to have differing interpretations. If there were no differing interpretations, and if we all had the same interpretation of the law, there would be no need for courts. We could just have police and no court system. There would be no need to adjudicate disputes, because it would be clear: here's the law; you've broken it or you haven't broken it, and we'll deal with you accordingly, and that will be the end of that. Of course, the odd time there actually is a state that gets run that way, and we know those as police states. We don't do that here, Mr. Chairman; we have a court system. But the Liberals would like to set that aside because there's a very strong risk--